I've been sick for the past week. I think I may be dying. I'm not really. It just feels that way. I have kidney stones. I've been collected by an ambulance and taken to the emergency room twice in the past 6 days and just yesterday spent even more time there. Some days are better than others and right now seeing as I'm sitting in my office chair and not in my big green recliner it's a good day so far.

My point to sharing this is I missed Halloween. I spent the first half of the day in the hospital. The second half in that comfy green recliner in the living room with a heat pack, water, soup, cranberry juice and pain killers by my side. I missed the Halloween party at school, wasn't able to take the kids trick or treating (they went with their dad), and couldn't even hand out candy at home (thank you teenager for taking over). We didn't even put decorations out, just a pumpkin and a few spiders along the path.

So I'm going to pretend that I didn't miss Halloween. In my mind, it was actually a couple of weeks ago when we went to a special trick or treating Halloween event at the San Elijo Lagoon Nature Center with friends. Now that was a great day, there were costumes, crafting, trick or treating, good friends and lots of fun.

She makes a pretty cute witch, don't you think?

Obviously I hadn't quite gotten around to making their Agnes and Lord Vampyre costumes at this point, so we re-used costumes we already had on hand at home.

And we did some fabulous activities.

Their first stop of the day was to make spider trick-or-treat bags.

They were made out of paper plates, pipecleaners and googly eyes. Of course Marisol had to match hers to her costume.

Then it was off onto the walking trail where there were various activities and trick or treat stations set up.

They dissected owl pellets at own station and collected a stamp at the end, and learned all about spiders of the lagoon at another station and then collected another little treat.

They learned about how mother bats and baby bats find each other by their scent, watched a presentation all about bats and collected a bat ring to wear.

They learned about the animals that live in the area and collected treats along their way.

Inside the nature center they made paper roll bats and owls.

And climbed through a giant web of ropes and made lollipop spiders at the end.